The Smerdiverse Episodic Campaign

Previously in the Smerdiverse Episodic Campaign, look-alikes (or perhaps the same look-alike on different occasions) of Michael Savant were mysteriously encountered. Since Michael Savant began his first ever Smerdiverse Campaign session with amnesia and remembers nothing that occurred before the first session he ever appeared in, locating one of these copies, twins, clones, or whatever they are has been an ongoing subplot for his character as he tries to uncover the secrets of his forgotten past.

At the beginning of this session, the St. Louis police department found a Michael Savant look-alike dressed (and smelling) like a homeless person, mumbling to himself and pacing back and forth in front of a derelict building in the Soulard district.

Because several folks in the neighborhood had called the station complaining about this man, the officers picked up this vagrant and began taking him away in their car. The car crashed and the feed from the car cam stopped.

A.S.P. operatives Uuuuugh! and Michael Savant were summoned to an A.S.P. briefing and shown the camera feed from the police car cam.

During the battle, the earth control powers of the Tundra Frog triggered an earthquake that snapped Naru out of her catatonic state in a mental hospital not far from Soulard. She managed to walk out of the hospital while the nurses and orderlies were dealing with the chaotic aftermath of the earthquake. (No one expected a young girl who has been catatonic for years to suddenly get up and walk away.)

After psychically communing with the Earth regarding the origin of the earthquake, Naru began telekinetically floating to the Soulard district and the battle.

When she arrived, she began psychically linking to the combatants on both sides and attracted the attention of Thistleknell, a dark fairy queen who acts as a sort of warped mother figure to Pandore and his Posse.

The Chronomancer, having delivered his pizza, changed into his costume and joined the fight.

The heroes succeeded in getting the Michael Savant look-alike into an A.S.P. flying van which took off at a high rate of speed toward A.S.P. headquarters.

The Tundra Frog,Pandore, his Posse, and Thistleknell broke off the combat once they realized they were not going to be able to recover their target.

The session ended with the scientists at A.S.P. headquarters attaching electrodes to both Michael Savant and his look-alike to begin finding some answers as to their mystery.
The look-alike had not responded well to ordinary interrogation, seeming to have some kind of mental disorder that prevented him from being lucid or coherent.

Atlantis, Ho!

Earlier, during the official GEA “Game Day” game, an artifact from Ancient Atlantis was discovered, a teleportation device that transported a large amount of the mid-Atlantic Ocean to the Valley Park and Fenton areas of the St. Louis metroplex. Valley Park and Fenton are low-lying and often flooded in real life during intense flood seasons. In the Adventure Log for the Smerdiverse Game Day Campaign for February 20th, 2010, a synopsis of that adventure can be found.

How the ancient artifact came to be in Missouri is unknown at this time.

John Erfurdt and Jeff Conway requested that Jon Klement run a session of the Episodic Campaign later that evening. Here is that session:

Several weeks later, A.S.P. scientists, having studied the artifact, determined how to reverse the teleportation effect. Agent Archer and Blue Lightning were “volunteered” to investigate the other side of the device’s teleportation gate.

They were transported, inside a mini-sub to the bottom of the mid-Atlantic and beheld the ruins of Atlantis. Being a an A.S.P. sub, it was equipped with powerful force fields that allowed it to adapt to the instant, enormous increase in pressure.

It turned out that unlike other comic book universes, the Atlantis of the Smerdiverse was not a living, thriving civilization under some aquatic dome. The city was clearly destroyed in whatever cataclysm befell it.

However, the heroic duo was surprised to find a force field protecting one of the ruined towers. A radio hail came from the tower, asking the heroes to identify themselves. Also, as the heroes approached, they could see a spaceship parked on the ocean floor inside the force field and next to the tower—the N.R.T. Davy Crockett.

The New Texans being familiar with A.S.P. from the events in Velocity Girl 4: Velocity Girl and the New Texas Space Rangers, our heroes were invited inside, where they met Colonel Jim Sanders. Colonel Sanders explained that the Greys were under Earth’s oceans looking for some kind of Atlantean artifact. The New Texans made it a policy to keep anything out of the Greys’ hands that they seemed to want that badly. The New Texas Space Rangers were determined to find whatever the Greys were looking for first.

Blue Lightning and Agent Archer decided to keep their information about the artifact discovered in the middle of North America in Missouri to themselves for the time being and returned to their sub after a cordial meal with the New Texans.

The game session ended with the two heroes in their mini-sub awaiting orders from A.S.P..